It’s been an extremely tough few years for Georgia Harrison. In 2020, she became a victim of revenge porn when her twisted ex-boyfriend Stephen Bear secretly filmed them having sex in his garden and shared the video on his OnlyFans account.
After bravely waiving her right to anonymity to pursue a conviction against him, he was found guilty and sentenced to 21 months in prison last year. The ordeal, which she filmed for her powerful ITV documentary, Revenge Porn: Georgia Vs Bear, came after a string of tragedies for the reality star. She sadly lost her childhood best friend Cenk Fahri to leukaemia in December 2021, and then ex-boyfriend Jake McLean in a car crash in July 2022.
Now that she’s coming through the other side, Georgia, 29 – who first found fame on TOWIE – is feeling stronger than ever, telling Closer she feels more compassionate and empathetic. And she reveals that taking part in this year’s Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins has been fundamental to her healing journey, as she was able to process her trauma and ‘let everything out’.Here, she tells us all about her emotional experience…
Do you think Celebrity SAS has changed you?
I feel like it definitely came at the perfect time in my life. It’s made me a lot stronger and more able to deal with everyday challenges. And I feel like it’s a really good way of processing trauma when you do something like that. You break open anything that you’ve been keeping under the surface and there’s no option but for it to come out and be resolved.
What have you learnt about yourself?
That I’m extremely resilient and can thrive in environments where I’m under an extreme amount of pressure. And I definitely learnt how to handle organisation a lot better. As someone who has ADHD, I feel like the course really helped me with learning how to get organised on time, prioritising having everything prepared and thinking about your future self.
You bravely opened up about your revenge porn ordeal on the show. How difficult was that?
I would say it’s the first time that I got truly emotional about those things in front of a camera. Because normally, you want to be mentally strong when there’s a camera there. Even in my documentary, I don’t think I cried much throughout it, apart from in BTS videos taken at home. But there’s something about being there and being so cold and so tired and so worn down, it makes all of your emotions rise to the surface and it makes you just really let everything out. I spoke about the situation with image-based sexual abuse, but also losing my best friend and my ex-boyfriend all in the same year. And it’s probably something that the public has never seen me talk openly and honestly about. Everything I experienced in that entire year just made me stronger, more compassionate and more empathetic. And it made me appreciate life more because life is really short and you never know what’s going to happen or how long you’re going to be here.
Were you prepared for it to come up in the interrogation room?
Yeah, all of this stuff was in my book, so it’s something I knew was probably going to come up at some point throughout the journey. But there’s something weird about sitting in that interrogation room. The second you sit in there, it’s so serious and the energy just changes. And it’s just got a way of really bringing things out of people. But it felt good to talk about it because it was nice to let the DS understand me more.
Who did you bond with out of all the celebs?
I was closest to Bianca [Gascoigne]. She became like a big sister to me on the show. We’ve got a lot of similarities between us. And of course, Bobby [Norris], because he was an old friend from TOWIE, and then Marnie [Simpson]. Us four went out to Sheesh the other night. And then I’ve seen Pete quite a lot, but he’s really busy now.
What do you think of him doing Strictly?
I think he’s doing absolutely brilliantly. He’s got no real dancing experience and he’s really stepping up to the mark. And I think he’s going to shock everyone and absolutely smash it.
Your documentary, Revenge Porn: Georgia vs Bear, was extremely powerful. Would you like to do more?
Yeah, I’m making two around the same sort of subject. I think that experience has just pushed me into a different definition of my being, and I can now see that it actually led me down a path of being a campaigner and activist for violence against women and girls – something I probably never would have done had that situation not arisen.
Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins airs on Channel 4 Sundays at 9pm